A Chiara

Just as Norway’s Joachim Tri­er recent­ly com­plet­ed his Oslo tril­o­gy with The Worst Per­son in the World, Jonas Carpig­nano has wrapped up his own Cal­abri­an trip­tych with new film A Chiara. It’s a unique addi­tion to the well-trod­den milieu of mafia thrillers, one whose orig­i­nal­i­ty is chan­nelled through its Ital­ian neo­re­al­ist approach. As such, it’s a film that brims with hon­esty as it expos­es a com­pli­cat­ed polit­i­cal land­scape, as well as the chal­lenges ordi­nary peo­ple are left to endure in the face of organ­ised crime and gov­ern­ment incompetence.

Carpignano’s cast of non-pro­fes­sion­al actors is made up of the Roto­lo fam­i­ly, and his abil­i­ty to elic­it such assured per­for­mances from them is espe­cial­ly remark­able with the added knowl­edge that they were work­ing with a semi-impro­vised script. The sto­ry is cen­tred on the tit­u­lar Chiara (Swamy Roto­lo) an inquis­i­tive 15-year-old girl who is caught with­in a web of lies as she inves­ti­gates her father’s sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance, with the gulf between her and the rest of her fam­i­ly only expanding.

In this iso­lat­ed process of unveil­ing deep fam­i­ly secrets and crim­i­nal ties all on her own, Chiara embarks on an unlike­ly jour­ney towards self-dis­cov­ery. It’s an immac­u­late turn from Swamy Roto­lo as she com­pelling­ly embod­ies both mature frus­tra­tion and ado­les­cent angst. Every mut­ed reac­tion and every expres­sive out­burst are height­ened by the claus­tro­pho­bic yet tac­tile visu­al lan­guage of Tim Curtin’s dis­tinct hand­held cinematography.

The film opens with a par­ty – a loose par­al­lel to the open­ing scene of The God­fa­ther – cel­e­brat­ing the 18^th birth­day of Chiara’s old­er sis­ter, Guil­ia (Gre­cia Roto­lo). It’s a whole­some affair, with friends and extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers play­ing games, mak­ing toasts and danc­ing to a corny Ed Sheer­an song. These are the last moments we get to see the fam­i­ly unit­ed as, lat­er that night, Clau­dio (Clau­dio Roto­lo), the patri­arch, dis­ap­pears fol­low­ing a car explosion.

Unfold­ing with­in a rather bloat­ed two-hour run­time is a nar­ra­tive that often falls into the trap of banal dia­logue (“They call it mafia, we call it sur­vival.”) and an aura of moral­ism that under­mines the poignan­cy of its supe­ri­or first half. Chiara is often faced with obsta­cles that feel man­u­fac­tured and thrown in for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing her at a crossroads.

A lived-in nat­u­ral­ism creeps in as the cam­era is con­stant­ly kept at arm’s length. At its most effec­tive, this style enhances the hon­esty, inti­ma­cy and inten­si­ty that guides the riv­et­ing nar­ra­tive. Yet as the film pro­gress­es, it elic­its a rather unwel­com­ing dis­tance and impa­tience that make it dif­fi­cult to remain total­ly immersed. Ade­quate­ly high stakes are replaced with a drawn-out sec­ond half that strug­gles to sus­tain momen­tum and com­pro­mis­es the pay­off as it feigns unnec­es­sary dra­mat­ic tension.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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